


in the stars at night

by jonphaedrus



Series: when daytime turns to night [2]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Ruby & Sapphire & Emerald | Pokemon Ruby Sapphire Emerald Versions
Genre: M/M, prince and pirate au, sex this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 07:52:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2614097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They would run, probably. Run forever.</p><p>---</p><p>Another series of interludes in the prince and pirate au</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the stars at night

**Author's Note:**

> i could have taken notes inc lass. i wrote this instead. Help

The boat that Archie brings him to is so small that there’s hardly room enough for the both of them. It’s only as long as the two of them head to toe, and so narrow that they can barely stand next to each other. The cabin in the centre is so low-ceiling that Maxie can’t stand in it, let alone Archie. When they lay down inside it, their feet stick out the back. Their poor Mightyenas have to stay in their balls, and they have to crush together every night.

But the ocean air is beautiful, and the sun setting on the surf is unbelievable, and every single day they get further away from his castle and his father, Maxie is happier, lighter, freer. And he can feel Archie watching him as they are anchored one day, their boat too small for an actual anchor and instead Archie’s Carvanna holding their boat steady. 

Archie is fishing. Maxie is dipping his feet in the water and watching the skyline while their Crobats wheel overhead, crying to each other and occasionally swooping down and catching scads of water-gnats out of the air. It’s not _cool,_ exactly, nowhere in Hoenn is ever cool, but the sun is not too hot and the breeze is constant, and it’s comfortable.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to teach you how to swim?” Archie’s voice as he lazily fishes jolts Maxie and he looks up and over at the younger man, and then shrugs.

“I used to know.” The waves lap at his knees where he has his legs in the water, and he lifts one up, splashing. “I can still tread water a bit.” He loves to be on the water, to look at the water (while Archie is there) but the idea of being any further in the water than his legs leaves a frisson of fear and a shudder embedded in his spine. It was nice on the surface, but underneath, the water was cold and complete and there was nothing—no light, no breath, just darkness and sinking. He had been in too many times. “But no. Thank you.” Archie grunted, as if he hadn’t asked several times in the little more than a week they had been out there, floating on the ocean, running.

What were they going to do eventually? Maxie didn’t know. As Archie jerked on his line and dragged up a rather large Barboach and tossed it into the bucket he had been fishing into all day, Maxie looked up at the sky and the sun hanging heavy and full just after the spot of noon, and sighed.

They would run, probably. Run forever.

 

 

 

The first time they docked, it was in Mossdeep. It’s so far away that Maxie’s never been, even despite all the travel he did as a Prince, so he isn’t instantly recognisable. He still stays crouched in the little cabin of their boat until he sees Archie return from being on land, and the other man comes into the boat, shakes his head.

No good.

They’ve started putting up signs and spreading word that the Prince is missing, then. As Archie unties his bandana and hands it over, Maxie knots it about his head, tucking his bright, bright red hair (not a common colour, not naturally, not in Hoenn) until its almost invisible, and then they go into town together.

For the first time in his life, he strips off all his old red clothes—he knows he will have them back someday, and they will keep them to sell despite their luxury—and they buy the simple clothes of sailors. Archie leaves with a wetsuit for diving, and Maxie leaves in red shorts and boots, and a white long-sleeve shirt that feels oddly uncomfortable. He misses jackets, even despite the heat. He misses the constant, comforting pressure that they gave. But it’s worth it, to not have the suffocating, choking life in the palace that he would have otherwise.

 

 

 

That night, they are tucked in side-by-side on their simple, reed mats that make the sleeping on bare wood slightly better, their heads sticking out of the cabin. It’s not likely to rain, not with the sky completely empty, and while Mossdeep has some lights its almost black and they can see the stars wheel overhead. 

“I think it’s nice,” Archie says, hands folded on his broad chest, staring deep into the twinkling darkness so far above them.

“What is?” Archie is so much calmer than Maxie is—he’s like the deep ocean, or a heavy stone. Even-keeled, a well-tacked boat. Maxie is hot and temperamental like lava, and never knows when he’s going to lose his temper, but he can’t. Not around Archie. 

“That the stars are the same,” Archie replies, looking back over at him, and suddenly Maxie doesn’t want to look at the stars—not when Archie is staring at him with his incredibly dark eyes, reflecting the pinpricks of light from Mossdeep and even further in, the dots of the stars. Up close, his skin is so well-bronzed and damaged by the sun, even in the darkness, that Maxie wonders what it would feel like if he touched it: certainly nothing like his smooth, perfect skin that he was always told to keep soft, with lotions and the cool, protected indoors. “We’re from such different places, but the stars are the same.”

Archie is right, of course. The stars _are_ the same. The constellations are the same for all of them.

Maxie leans forward, and kisses Archie. Archie kisses him back. It’s the first time, and it feels like the hundredth, the thousandth, and then Maxie wraps his arms around Archie’s neck and pulls him closer and he stops caring about the stars, stops caring about anything else but the way that Archie’s rough skin and beard feel against his face, and the harsh, helpless way that the younger man is gasping for breath between their lips.

  

 

 

When they get their first crewmember, Archie sells their little tiny boat, and Maxie watches it go almost sadly—it’s weathered now, from all the time they’ve spend sailing it about (three, almost four years, it’s hard to believe) and he knows they’ll never crush both their bodies into that tiny cabin again, trying to hide from the rain, laughing until they shiver and then kissing until it stops.

The new boat actually has a real cabin, though. It has a permanent sail instead of a temporary one. There’s even enough space for their Mightyenas to be on the deck, and both of them bark happily and run about in circles, leaping up stairs and panting into the ocean wind. 

“Think it’s strong enough for Caramel?” Maxie frowns at Archie when the younger man asks him that, leaning against the railing and smiling into the fresh breeze that is coming off of the Slateport cove. 

“I wish you would stop calling him that,” Maxie responds, reaching down to touch the single Pokéball at his belt. Their Crobats are already roosting on the railing, as inseparable as ever, chirping at each other, and their Mightyenas yip and bark, and down below them in the ocean he can see Archie’s Sharpedo’s single top fin half out of the water—he’s hunting for food. “It’s starting to stick.” He had never nicknamed his Pokémon, not even as a child, but Archie is making this one particular nickname for his poor Numel stick.  

Archie grins, and winks, even as Shelly goes scrambling down the pole for the sail in the background. “That’s the point.”

Maxie just sighs at him, shakes his head, and then hides the smile on his lips in the way he turns his head.

 

 

 

When they have three more crewmembers the boat is too full, and there are far, _far_ too many Pokémon running about and underfoot (not to mention a gaggle of very small Zubats that keep biting people, despite the warnings of two unhappy parent Crobats) that Archie decides they need a bigger boat. 

Maxie suggests entering some kind of competition and winning prize money—they certainly could, especially if they pooled their pokemon or did it as two trainers—but Archie’s point that even now, almost ten years later, a red-headed man in his late thirties is likely to get them far more attention than they want shuts that down, so instead they end up storming another ship.

Maxie finds it far, far more fun than he would like to admit, especially as he hangs onto the wheel of their boat and directs his Crobat with tense, _in_ tense commands, and Archie and the rest of their crew take down the other trainers on the vessel from closer up. It’s remarkably, surprisingly easy, and Maxie had always forgotten that Archie had been a pirate once upon a time when they had first met. He had forgotten that this was Archie was able to do.

They take the boat, dump the larger crew on their old smaller one, tied up together, and take all of their things to the new one. It’s completely free _and_ comes with free extra money in the form of shipped potions going from Lilycove to the Indigo Plateau, and the cabin is not only large enough for both of them, but large enough for a _bed._

“I haven’t slept in a bed in eight years,” Maxie says from laying flat on his back on the bed, smiling stupidly at the ceiling, where there are six tiny Zubats hanging upside down that keep whacking each other.

“You could have said something,” Archie replies, scratching his Mightyena’s neck, head pillowed on the bed next to Maxie’s thigh. Without moving anything else, Maxie reaches out, pushes the younger man’s bandana down, and starts scratching his head until both man and Pokémon are slumped happily back against the bed, boneless.

“It was good enough with you there,” Maxie says, finally. He wouldn’t have minded just sleeping forever on the rush mats in their first boat, if Archie was there. A bed with Archie there is even better, but he doesn’t really mind. He doesn’t say anything else, but he can tell Archie knew what he meant. They’ve been together long enough now that it’s all but second nature.

 

 

 

“I swear to Arceus, it’s like we have kids,” Archie whispers, and Maxie has to choke back a laugh by muffling it against the younger man’s shoulder, clutching helplessly at his shoulders. The “kids” are their crew of now nineteen, stomping about outside their cabin, and the distant shouts of Tabitha being attacked by the newest little Zubats. It’s in the middle of the night, or they would never be able to get away with this—someone would probably barge in.

“How scandalised do you think they would be,” Maxie whispers into Archie’s ear, moaning halfway through when the younger man rolls his hips _just right,_ “If they knew that we got up to this.”

“I’m pretty sure they know,” Archie replies, adjusting his hold on Maxie’s waist to change the angle, and this time when he thrusts in, Maxie presses his face against the younger man’s neck and moans, loudly, into his skin. “They just don’t like thinking about it.” Archie’s dark skin is slicked with sweat and tastes like Maxie can imagine the ocean does, and he digs his fingers harder into Archie’s shoulder.

Oh, he knows they would be scandalised. Horrified, and disgusted, probably. He’s heard several of the newer crew members, most of them just barely teenagers, refer to either him or Archie accidentally as _Dad_ before, and thats surreal. They never wanted to have kids or a family, they just wanted to escape—at first, he didn’t think they even wanted to be together, not like this.

Not like this, with Archie pressing open-mouthed wet kisses against the joint of his shoulder, his broad, hot hands cupping around the back of Maxie’s hips and waist to rub the tips of his fingers at the top of the crack of his ass, gentle and wanting. Not like this, with Archie balls-deep inside him, Maxie holding tight to his lover like it’s the end of the world, trapped under his weight like a stone on his chest, legs locked up around his waist urging him on, urging him deeper, clenching around him and whispering dirty, breathless things into his ear until Archie comes, one hand twisted in the sheets of their stolen bed, biting his lower lip to cut off a shout, thighs shaking against the underside of Maxie’s ass, panting for breath and whining as he tries to shake forward in again, again, fucking himself through the afterglow, filling Maxie until the knowledge that he is just so _full_ pushes Maxie over the edge. He’s so much quieter, keening in the back of his throat as his body seizes up and he comes on both of their stomachs, legs locked around Archie’s waist and clutching him closer, nails digging crescents into the younger man’s back until they both slump, exhausted, boneless, locked up and lost in each other and the rock of the boat and the shouts of the sailors, breathing in time, silently lost.


End file.
